"You are right," says Da Sylva; "she alone shall know who you are.... This man."
"Well?" asks Caroline anxiously.
"This man," says Da Sylva leaning close to his daughter's ear; "this man is the executioner!"
"Caroline shrieks and falls. That is the end of the prologue."
"Wait a bit," I said, "surely I know something similar to that ... yes ... no. Yes, in the Chronicles of the Canongate!"
"Yes; it was, in fact, Walter Scott's novel which gave us the idea for our play."
"Well, but what then? There is no drama in the remainder of the novel."
"No.... So we depart completely from it here."
"Good! And when we leave it what follows?"
"There is an interval of twenty-six years. The stage represents the same room; only, everything has grown older in twenty-six years, personages, furniture and hangings. The man whose face the audience saw, and whom Da Sylva denounced in a whisper to his daughter, as the executioner, is playing chess with Dr. Grey; Mrs. Grey is sewing; Richard, the child of the prologue, is, standing up writing; Jenny, the doctor's daughter, watches him as he writes."
"Stay, that idea of everybody twenty-six years older is capital."
"And then?"